- 9 minutes ago
Robert Tiffin joined the K&C Masterpiece to recap the Stars’ disappointing first-round exit against the Minnesota Wild. Tiffin broke down the team's five-on-five scoring struggles, analyzed the impact of key performances, shared his thoughts on the roster's future outlook, and more.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00It is Robert Tiffin. Good afternoon, sir.
00:05Good to talk to you guys. My apologies. I just didn't have it this year. That's on me, 100%.
00:10I'm glad that you take responsibility for that.
00:13He's a good man. We've always said that.
00:15He is. When I look at last year against the Oilers, and you got outscored like 13-5, 5-on
00:22-5,
00:23and this series, I think you got outscored 14-4, 5-on-5.
00:27That is not just a thing that happens. That is a worrying trend, anything in particular,
00:33although I'm guessing there's a lot of things behind that trend.
00:38Yeah. We also have to distinguish terms a little bit here because the Stars,
00:45if you look at things like puck possession or shot attempts, the Stars had the puck a lot,
00:52and they actually created a lot more shots than the Wild, just in terms of Ra who was putting pucks
00:58toward the net. But the deeper you dig into the data, the Stars weren't doing the thing they were
01:05doing for most of the season, which is getting to the front of the net with high quality chances.
01:11Even just a few per game was often enough this season for the Stars to punish another team.
01:15I mean, how many times over the season did we say, man, the Stars keep getting outshot,
01:20but they keep scraping out wins.
01:21Right.
01:22And the reason for that was because those few shots they were getting,
01:26they were being really picky and really creative and finding ways to get those shots from the most
01:31dangerous areas. And in this series, the Wild, to their credit, were able to keep the Stars largely out
01:37of those areas. Even when the Stars did get there, the Wild were packed in tightly enough to clear the
01:42rebounds. And Yester Walsh, that was really good in goal too, which helped when those shots did get
01:46through. So that's how you get to those numbers, like you said, at five on five, where the Stars
01:50just couldn't create that space. A lot of different reasons for that, but they just weren't able to
01:55pull the same trick off that they did during the regular season and get to those most dangerous
01:59areas enough to score a five on five.
02:02And I know definitely the Wild are a very good team, and they deserve credit. I have to admit,
02:08though, I was surprised that it really felt like the Stars came out really flat in this game, not just
02:15because they fell behind either. It just looked like they were out there, but you didn't see any of the
02:20fire. It felt like they led this series three to two and not the other way around.
02:26That first period was one of the worst ones of at least the playoffs, and I'm tempted to go through
02:32go through a lot of data this season and look at how bad that was, even related to all the
02:38first
02:38periods of the season. It was a rough one, and it makes you ask lots of questions that you didn't
02:42really want to ask, even if they did lose this series. Like you said, the Wild are a good team.
02:47Everyone knew this was going to be a tough series. These teams really shouldn't be meeting in the
02:50first round. That format we have. But to come out in an elimination game like that
02:56is hard to defend. We talked about game ones last year, too, and for a long time with this team.
03:02We've talked about how they struggled to come out in a series really on fire, and now here in an
03:08elimination game, they struggle to come out even in the first period of the game like a team that
03:14looked hungry and desperate. That's a problem, or it's a reflection of something else that was going
03:21on. But either way, it was not a fun watch. It just wasn't. As a fan, you never want to
03:26see a
03:26team go out like that. At least they did bounce back and actually get a lead later, but man, the
03:31first period was a bummer. Yeah, it was the, I think the one for me in that first period was
03:35the
03:35turnover in your zone that made Ottinger like have to sprawl all over the place. Yeah. Like that just
03:41can't happen in the first period. Yeah, at all. That was, that was, that was tough. And I saw a
03:45few
03:45more of those from Miro last night more than I, I usually do. Yeah, that was the third goal.
03:51What wound up being the game winning goal, right? That all started the one that Quinn Hughes
03:55banked in off the little Bushkin skate, which is no fault for Bushkin. He's in the right spot
03:59fighting at the net, trying to protect the crease, right? But the whole reason that happened
04:03is because you have Miro Haskin, one of the best defensemen in the league, passing a puck
04:09to Matt Duchesne, who's got some of the highest puck skills on this team. You know, two veterans,
04:14two very highly regarded players, they just completely miss each other on a pass. The puck
04:20bounces off of Duchesne's stick because it's not accurate. And boom, the Wilds get the puck
04:24and five, six seconds later, it's in the back of the net. I mean, that it's, it's almost
04:29unbelievable. And it makes you ask again, a lot of questions that fans didn't really want
04:33to have to be asking going into the series, which is why is Miro Haskin and not able to make
04:38a simple breakout pass? Why is Matt Duchesne down there not able to receive the puck better?
04:43What is going on? And like you said, that wasn't just one isolated moment. It was happening
04:47a few times in that game and in this series. And that's what Goldson said too, is any mistake
04:52they made, it seemed like the Wilds were able to punish them for it. And they just made too
04:55many of them. They really did. And they deserve to lose.
04:59Let me ask one of those questions. And I promise I'm not trying to be hot take guy, but is
05:06it
05:06possible that we need to settle into a new reality that Miro Haskin is a good player, but definitely
05:15not at the level we all kind of wanted him to be or hoped he was?
05:21I think one thing the stars have seen consistently, Aaron Braskin-Goldson about this a month or two
05:27ago, when it was in one of those comebacks against St. Louis, when they had those like
05:32three comeback wins against St. Louis late this season. And Miro Haskin had made a great
05:37play. I think he passed to Jamie Benn, as I recall, for the game-winning goal in like
05:40the last minute of the game. And Miro Haskin made a rush down. He got the puck in his own
05:44zone and basically went coast to coast down the left side, just using his skating, that
05:49great elite skating he's always had, even since before he was drafted back in 2017. And
05:55he beat a bunch of players off the ice and made a great pass. And in this series, again,
06:00he did get hurt, right? Tangled up with Brian Hartman of the Minnesota Wild in game 79 in
06:05April. And Miro Haskin didn't look like one of the best defense. He didn't look like Quinn
06:12Hughes or even brought favorite times in this series. He had his moments, but whether he
06:17was completely healthy or not, it seems like that offensive gear, particularly with the
06:23puck, those, the head fakes and even stuff we used to see with John Klingberg back in
06:27the day, the ability to kind of lose a player and create a great A scoring chance. Miro Haskin
06:32isn't necessarily wired that way. And yeah, it might be time for fans to kind of reconcile
06:37themselves to the fact that that just might not be a part of his game he's that comfortable
06:42with. Maybe he is more of the two-way guy who's elite at getting the puck to other players
06:48and connecting with other players, but he's just not going to be Quinn Hughes. And that's
06:54unfortunate because you look at all the skills he has and you think, man, if someone could
06:58just, you know, antagonize him or goad him into...
07:01Miko Reitman, if you talk about that in-your-face, edgy, fast style, in need of a game-breaker,
07:08he was missing for a lot of this series. Do you think that was lingering from potentially
07:13the injury? Or do you think it was a case of one of the knocks on Miko over his career
07:18that keeps him out of being consistently in that top five is he has top five stuff, but
07:23he'll also disappear on you for a few games?
07:27Yeah, that's been a knock on him. And defensively, he's never been, you know, he's not going to
07:33be Uri Lettinen out there defensively. That's just not his game. But the Stars didn't get
07:38him for him to be that player, right? They got him because he's a superstar who can be
07:42a game-breaking talent, who can do things like we saw in the playoffs last year.
07:46For sure.
07:46He can put a team on his back and do it. That's what the player the Stars didn't have for
07:51a
07:51long time. And Jim Noe went out and sold the farm and got a player like that.
07:55And I don't know about you guys, but watching Miko Rantanen in this series time and time
08:00again, it just looked like a player who wasn't able to push off as much as he needed to at
08:05times to lose a guy. He couldn't get past players. And so he would get close to, but
08:10he's so strong. Like there were times during the season and even last playoffs where he
08:14would be able to get past a player and maybe they committed penalty on him, maybe not, but
08:18he was just so strong. I mean, his name moves for a reason. He's just so powerful and
08:23skilled, but that combination is just deadly in this series. That combination didn't seem
08:29as powerful. Um, I'm not a doctor, so I'm not going to get too speculative, but there's
08:35no question to me that the player where you're seeing in these playoffs was not a hundred
08:39percent of the player that the Stars had for the last playoff run. And that injury at the
08:43Olympics, um, I, I tend to think was probably a pretty big factor, whatever it was, because
08:49there was a lot of frustration in his game too. I mean, he got fined for, for a cross
08:53check. He just got fined today by the NHL for that cross check at Caprizo last night.
08:57And that to me, it was a clear frustration penalty for stuff that maybe wasn't called
09:01right. He got pulled off for concussion protocol after he gets five stick was frustrated about
09:06other penalties that weren't called and he's an emotional player. Um, that's, that's who he
09:11is. But the problem is when those emotions get the better of you and when you're not
09:15impacting the game in the way you want to, those emotions tend to come out and unhealthy
09:19ways. And despite, you know, scoring seven points in six games, he was also minus eight
09:25because he and the rest of the Stars, other days, or Robertson couldn't really do anything
09:28at even starting from this series. And I think that injury has to have been a part of that.
09:32And, you know, talking about that push off and that ability to get out in front, it did
09:36feel like the Stars were the slower team and like just listening this morning, Robert, to
09:42all the callers and, you know, we're all experts. Uh, but listening, listening to that,
09:47but it was, we got to be faster. And I feel like I say this every year, faster and tougher.
09:52And we'll get, I'm going to talk about tough in just a minute with you, but can we kind
09:55of talk a little bit about where would you put this team as, as a team speed kind of
10:00group? Are they on the lower tier of this thing?
10:04Well, there's, there's raw speed and there's playing fast. And I mean, look at Jason Robertson,
10:10who had an incredible season with the Stars at even strength also, right? And of course,
10:16the power play, we all know what they did in the power play all year long, all year long
10:19when they had time and space. Um, and speed looks a little differently because the puck
10:22is doing the most of the work for you. But even in going goals and system, which was less
10:28of a rush based offense than, than under Pete DeBoer, where there was more emphasis on transition
10:32and playing really, really fast and breaking the puck out. They were a little bit more of a deliberate
10:36team. So some of that's by design.
10:37And some of that is also related to how they defend under Glenn Goltz and where they're
10:42a little bit more structured and they give up a little bit more space or on the outside
10:45of the rink and the defensive zone in favor of protecting the most dangerous areas. And
10:49their defensive numbers were better this year than they were last year. So it kind of worked
10:53as designed. The problem in this series is when you don't have Rope Hintz, who is probably
10:58your quickest two way center, right? Or your quickest center or just, he's one of the quickest
11:02players in the NHL. So missing a player like that, you're going to look slower. Miko Rantz
11:07and being a little bit hobbled, you're going to look slower. Miro Haskin, whether he was
11:10a hundred percent or not, I mean, he missed the last three games of the season and, you
11:14know, got back for game one, but we weren't sure if he was going to get back for game one
11:17of the playoffs or not. So maybe he was also a tick slower too. This isn't a team that's
11:22constructed to be, you know, they're like Colorado or Utah teams that are very much based
11:27on a lot of their speed and just playing kind of that frenetic pace, but they can still
11:32be a really dangerous team. As we saw all year, they beat a lot of fast teams during
11:35the regular season. You don't get to 112 points by accident, but in this series, I think what
11:41was really happening, and this might sound condescending to some of those callers of yours,
11:45but you know, hey, I don't have to, they don't have my phone number. So anytime a team is getting
11:52outplayed, they're always going to look slower because they're being reactive. Whereas when
11:56you're controlling play, however you're doing it, whether you're controlling it with speed
12:00or puck possession or physicality, you're always going to look faster because the other
12:04team is reacting to you. And when you're not controlling play, that's what you get.
12:08I think that kind of goes hand in hand a little bit with kind of the toughness factor too,
12:12because I don't want to question dudes that play this sport are tough, all right? I'm never
12:16going to say they're not because fighting through what they fight through, I don't want to say
12:20that. But comparably, when you see what you see on the ice, everybody brings up tough.
12:24You're not as tough. You're not doing these things. I keep bringing up sticky because it seemed
12:30like Minnesota, as soon as the puck got to somebody's stick, Minnesota was on them. And
12:34maybe that's from the team speed part, the reaction part of it, but it didn't feel like
12:39they answered that call frequently enough. And Minnesota was more often than not looking
12:45to finish a check, looking to hit, looking to do those things and just add that extra
12:50thing to make you go, oh, whenever it was on the ice. And so it looks like you're not as
12:54tough as the opponent. But when it comes to that toughness, I haven't felt in the last
12:59what, six years? That's been part of their style. And I'm just kind of curious on how
13:04you might fix or correct or grow that. Because I did feel like Gullitson added a little different
13:08mentality this year.
13:11Yeah. And, you know, we shouldn't gloss over the Colin Blackwell hit on Yakov Trenton early
13:17in the series that knocked him out for a few games, right? But Colin Blackwell, I think
13:21you've listed at 5'8". So if a 5'8 fourth liner is delivering the biggest hit of the series
13:27for your team, I think it is fair to ask where's the physicality coming from and where's that
13:32toughness coming from? Marcus Foligno called out Jamie Benn the other day in an interview
13:37saying, yeah, we've been asking him to fight multiple times and he just won't fight. He
13:40won't stick up for, you know, if you read Minnesota media coverage, there's a lot of stuff about
13:46how dirty of a player Jamie Benn was. Again, he got fined for a cross check. Yeah, that was
13:49dirty. They've talked about slew foots and all this stuff, the hit from behind on Matt
13:53Boldy when he conked him in the back of the helmet. They were not big fans of Jamie Benn.
13:57I think a lot of teams don't have a particularly high, or at least fan bases don't have high
14:01regard for Jamie Benn because of the types of things that he's sometimes done in his career.
14:05But the way to quiet stuff like that and to galvanize your team is to stand up and do
14:10something, right? To be the player that leaves that big hit as an impression. To stand up and
14:15have that fight where you make a statement. If nothing else, sometimes those things don't
14:20really mean anything. We all saw Brady Kachuk drop the gloves in Ottawa's first game of
14:24the playoffs and they got swept pretty easily. And Brady Kachuk did almost nothing in that
14:29series outside of that fight. So that's not to say the fight necessarily leads to better
14:33results, but certainly helps your fan base to feel a little bit better about your team.
14:38And when you're a player in the part of his career that Jamie Benn is at, it was tough to
14:43see him opting not to do any of those things, right? He was having trouble getting up and down
14:49on the ice with pace and declining fights. If that was what was happening, right? We
14:55only have Marcus Foligno's word so far to go off of.
15:00I mean, he was right about the five on five thing.
15:05Hey, you know what? The reputation earned, I guess, right there, right?
15:10I don't know. Yeah. You'd like to have seen someone stand up at some point and just kind
15:15of stick up for lack of a better word. I mean, you know, Rantan had a big hit.
15:19I've been showing a couple of big hits. They're players who, I don't think they're a soft team.
15:23I do think they were more physical this year than last year. But I also wonder if part of
15:29that is just the roster. It's not necessarily a coach. The coach can't be the ones, the one
15:33laying the hits like that. That's a roster and team leadership type thing. And when you have
15:37Amika Rantan, it's not a hundred percent. When you have Jamie Benn, who's in the, towards the
15:41back end of his career and maybe at the end of his career, you know, we don't know. He's not
15:45signing for next year. It's tough to muster that. And this looked like a playoff series
15:50where the Wilds were able to push him around a little bit, both with speed and with physicality
15:55at times. And that's not a fun thing to watch.
15:57I feel like you've really baited me or forced me into asking you this question a couple of
16:01different times now. So not if, should that have been the final game that Jamie Benn ever
16:09plays for the Stars?
16:11I was talking to someone about this last night and I said, the Michael Bunting conversation
16:17that started to get this forward at the trade deadline and then they scratch him for the
16:22first five games of the playoffs. And part of it is because you don't want to scratch
16:26any of the four kind of penalty killers you have, you know, Beck, Steele, Blackwell and
16:30Foxa. And then your other wingers are kind of two other, you have Jamie Benn is one of
16:38those other wingers that would scratch who doesn't play a pivotal part of the penalty
16:41kill, but you can't scratch your captain. I mean, there's just a different sort of cost
16:46to scratching your captain, especially at that point in the playoffs. It feels like a panicky
16:51desperation move and that can cause some discord and everything. It's a bad situation just for
16:58the team and for the player and for the coach. It's a bad situation to be in when the player
17:04that probably should have been first on the list to be scratched in favor of Michael Bunting
17:09was your captain. And I think the Stars need to figure out a way not to be in that situation
17:14next year, whether that's moving, moving to sea and maybe they want to bring Jamie Benn
17:19back. I don't know. Maybe that's a longer conversation. I just don't see how they can
17:24choose to put themselves in the situation again next year, though, because it was a, it was
17:34this year too. We got collapsed lung, got his, you know, orbital bone fracture, whatever
17:38that scar is in the front of his face from hitting the ice and he still played 60 games
17:42and scored what, 30 something points. So it's not like he was nothing out there during the
17:46season, but in this series, yeah, I think a lot of fans are asking that question and
17:51his, his turnover for that empty netter felt like kind of a punctuation mark on all those
17:56conversations. So yeah, I, I don't see how you can knowingly walk back into the same
18:02situation a year from now. And, and, and you're right. We can have those conversations
18:06probably even with you next week, but Jim Nill is normally beyond reproach, but did he not
18:13make this, this situation or create this situation by saying, I think it was last year,
18:20as long as I'm here, Jamie Benn and he wants to play, he'll wear the sea. You can look back
18:24at that in retrospect. And I realized captain hindsight always wins, but that feels like that
18:29was a pretty bad decision. I'm writing something about this today, actually. So I'm a subscriber.
18:36So that's good. It's a good point. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, the cascading effects of bad decisions
18:43is so crazy. Like you can, you can look back at things, this Jamie Benn, like that statement
18:50about Jamie Benn, I would argue is directly related to how Mike Adonis tenure with the team
18:54ended when, when they let him go and Joe Neuendijk chose not to bring him back. So he went to
18:59Detroit
18:59for one year at the end of his career that left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, just about how
19:04the best player of franchise history, the guy who has a statue out front, the team couldn't figure
19:09out how to, how to end his time in Dallas. Well, you know, he, he bears some blame for that.
19:15Sure.
19:15But it wasn't, it didn't go well at the very end. Right. I think there's been a lot of
19:21consideration, especially from, you know, the owner on down about, Hey, let's not make
19:26those mistakes. Let's not make a hallmark of this era of the stars. We're going to screw
19:31up handling, you know, our captain, our guy who's been here since 2009, who played next
19:37to Mike Madonna and his repair on that line. When Jamie Benn came up, we don't want to make
19:41that same mistake. So that leads to decisions like, you know what, we're going to find a way
19:45to keep Jamie Benn on this roster. If he keeps coming back, because we don't want to make
19:49that mistake. Okay. You can look at the trade deadline. Ilya Bushkin and Matt Dumba two years
19:52ago when Chris Tanev didn't want to come back, then they had to buy out Matt Dumba. That takes
19:56up some cap space. Ilya Bushkin, where was he supposed to fit this year to bring in Tyler
20:00Myers? Because Ilya Bushkin wasn't quite as trusted enough. And then Nils Blundquist gets
20:04hurt because you don't have the cap space to make a bigger move. Like for someone like Seth
20:08Jones, you know, a year ago at the deadline when Florida went out and got him. It's, it's so
20:13crazy to look back at all the, the Ryan Suter buyout when that took up some cap space too.
20:18And then you have to end up filling his spot. There's all these things where yes, this decision
20:22ended up not being the best. Jim Nils trade deadline this year. It didn't work out well.
20:27There's, there's no nice way to say it when both of those players get scratched at points or for
20:31most of the playoff series and Tyler Myers and Michael Bunting, your trade deadline didn't go
20:36well. The reasons for that, well, they connect to other decisions further back down the road,
20:41but how do you stop that cycle at a certain point? You got to cut your losses and it's going
20:45to be
20:45really interesting off season for, for Jim Nils, especially because the Jason Robertson
20:50decision looks like maybe one of the biggest ones that could have good or bad cascading effects
20:55down the road, whichever way it goes. So I don't need you to answer any of the,
20:59these specific player questions, but what I want to know is, are you most excited about answering
21:05off season questions about Jamie Ben or Jason Robertson or, huh, what do we really have with
21:11Jake Ottinger now? Like which one of those are you most excited to be asked about 50 million times?
21:19The Jake Ottinger one, I think I'm most excited about because, uh, goaltending is the type of
21:25thing that you, you always think everyone else has it better than you. Anytime you don't win,
21:29you always assume there's some better goaltender out there. I would argue that the stars have it
21:34better than a lot of fans realize, even though Jake Ottinger clearly didn't have his best season this
21:38year and he didn't have his best playoff run this year either. Um, that's an easier conversation
21:43for me just because I think you can point to a lot of pretty objective things, but Jamie Ben thing
21:47is so emotional and he's kind of been a polarizing player, especially, you know, there's certainly
21:53even from the ownership, making some comments about him six or seven years ago. And then certainly
21:57is Mark stone incident a few years ago that I've, it's hard to keep everyone kind of rational
22:03and Jamie Ben conversations. Uh, and then the Jason Robertson thing, Hey, nothing else. I can just ignore
22:08people for a month and then it'll get sorted out by July 1st. So that is a strategy. Uh, I
22:13will say
22:14at stars thoughts.com, I have learned a lot more big words. Thanks to you. I really appreciate that.
22:20And, uh, and also some really, some really creative language on, on that website. I thoroughly enjoy
22:26it. I suggest everybody to go do it. That being said, I, I am, I'm not ready to be done
22:32with the
22:32hockey playoffs. So I want a team that hasn't hurt my feelings, but we'll be entertaining
22:53rough. You know, he's a stars coach for a little while. Sure. Um, I look either way, you got to
22:58pick an Eastern conference team because, uh, other right now it's what like Anaheim, Colorado,
23:03Minnesota. I don't think many stars fans have much luck for any of those franchises. Um, but the
23:09other offshoot of Carolina, look, they're kind of a weird quirky team that keeps getting close,
23:13but it's never, well, they had, they did win in 2006. Uh, in this recent era of the hurricanes,
23:18they've always been a team that gets pretty far in the playoffs, but can never quite get all the
23:22way. So they're a little bit like the stars in that regard lately. Plus they've got some
23:26guy named Logan Stankoven on their team. Um, and you know, how can you not still root for
23:31Logan Stankoven on some level? So if you want your bandwagon team, I'd say hop on the Carolina
23:34trade. There you go. I like it. The last question. How are you, how excited are you going to be
23:39to see Connor McDavid, uh, wearing a stars on the stars next year? And the one, not as excited
23:46as he would be from the sound of his post game interview.
23:52He's like, I signed this contract for a reason. All right. Stars thoughts.com. Robert, thank you
23:58so very much. And obviously we will probably try to have you on the show again next week.
24:04You bet guys. It's been a fun season. Always good talking with you.
Comments